Chip makers join embedded vision group

SAN JOSE, Calif. – More than a dozen vendors have joined a new industry group promoting computer vision in embedded systems. The Embedded Vision Alliance aims to provide education about the technology and help develop a broad range of emerging markets for it.

"I personally believe this technology is going to have a huge impact making all sorts of system more intelligent, aware and responsive," said Jeff Bier, president of Berkeley Design Technology Inc. (BDTI), a DSP consulting firm and organizing member of the group.

The group shares a belief that computer vision technology is maturing, making it ripe for use in everything from toys to TVs, car navigation systems, medical systems and more. Bier shared that vision in a talk in April when he first tipped plans for the group.

"Just look at the Microsoft Kinect, which added vision to the Xbox 360 and became the fastest-selling consumer electronics device in history, shipping more than 10 million units in 5 months—and that's just a small part of the story," said Bier.

The group aims to provide education about the technology and its markets through its Web site. However, members are also considering technical roles the group could play.

"There is a strong need for standards, and there also is a need for a tangible, common infrastructure for the embedded developer," said Bier, pointing to OpenCV, a PC-based tool. "That’s great, but what about an inexpensive, easy-to-use embedded vision platform," he asked.

Plenty of technical challenges are still ahead in embedded computer vision, according to Bier.

The technology can demand significant silicon performance. For example, running an algorithm on a 720-progressive flow of imaging data optimized for a modern VLIW DSP architecture can consume about 200 MHz/frame/second, he said. In addition, many vision functions will require highly parallel or specialized hardware and the algorithms they run are diverse and dynamic, he added.

Dues for a basic membership are only, $5,000, a factor that is attracting a number of smaller companies. They include Apical Imaging, a U.K. company developing algorithms to improve image quality; Ximea, a company designing intelligent cameras and two embedded processor startups—CogniVue in Canada and Xmos in the U.K.

The group is defining a new membership class geared for system designers.

"With hundreds of companies now developing embedded vision components, products and applications, the EVA can become the pivotal hub that not only educates companies on the potential of embedded vision, but also enables the industry to share ideas and best practices," said Ian Weightman, president of market research firm IMS Research, a member of the group.

Computer Vision + Gesture recognition is going to be very pervasive in home electronics in the coming years. You can probably just wave at your TV, to switch channels or turn it off. The huge success of MS Kinect, makes me believe that all the components required, like 3D radars,imaging cameras are available and ready for primetime. Just that someone like Sony/Samsung has to do the necessary research and start integrating it into home electronics.

Good to see advance in computer vision. Combining with voice and gesture recognition, it helps to improve the user-friendliness of an equipment. At the end, no body needs to spend time reading thick manual and dealing with the large keypad.

I always look forward to the wide spread application of computer vision. The invention of Kinect is an exceptional example of its application. In the very near future, computer aided driving or even automatic driving will likely have the sense of computer vision. What other area will computer vision apply?

Processing 2D images is challenging in its own right, but aiming for spacial awareness as is done in Kinect could be very interesting. We've come a long way in our expectations from the 8-bit CPUs that I used to work with.
Larry M.

The camel's nose is really starting to poke into the privacy tent. We have cell phones that casually report in their-your real time position, cars that have been quietly equipped with black boxes for years, cameras in public places fed into DVRs with excellent facial recognition, and now the majors are moving to embed computer vision into home systems. Recall the school district that secretly embedded student issued laptops with remote video monitoring software, then illegally watched the students at home - if people can, they will, and they do. The information that future home computer vision tools can potentially be programmed to collect and-or transmit from inside private residences should give everyone long pause before inviting them in unconditionally. Loss of privacy is written all over computer vision enabled tools, but like cell phones, users will not asked, nor realize what has been taken until a long time later.

You have to look at all the positive applications. At Organic Motion we have been providing computer vision technology without any suits or markers for quite some time (a kinect on steroids if you will.. :-) As one example, think about motion analysis in the life sciences. You can check some of the applications in our channel, www.youtube.com/organicmotion